Embracing the "We"

I was born in Louisville, KY, so it was a special honor when the University of Louisville and the Louisville Community Foundation gave me their “Victory of Spirit Award” in 1994. With the Award came an invitation to offer a lecture on some aspect of ethics. I recently stumbled into a script of the lecture I gave and I realized that I could give it with little change today.

It was a cool autumn day (October 19, 1994) when I issued a call to see humanity as a single family. Here’s part of what I said:

…I truly do not know what it was, exactly, that motivated White Americans to hide slaves on stops along the Underground Railroad. Neither do I know why Dutch Calvinists risked their lives to hide Polish Jews. Religion was an important ingredient in the recipe for some courage. And I suppose that there was this: A person whose life was not at risk saw a person whose life was, and said “It could be me.” In that one moment of clear thought, someone realized, correctly, that we who are human are, all of us, one.

The division into “us” and “them” is deadly. It justifies slavery and its fills ovens with Jews. It enabled America to believe it had nothing to fear from AIDS because the majority is heterosexual and we, the majority, were convinced that this was a gay man’s disease: theirs. Only when the virus began infecting the majority – people like “us” instead of “them” – did our conscience awaken.

Even today the consequences of homophobia mark the AIDS movement. Legislation is named not for one of the hundreds of thousands of gay men who have died, but for Ryan White, a charming young and heterosexual teenager. These are acceptable: Arthur Ashe, Elizabeth Glaser, Magic Johnson…and Mary Fisher….

But now and again someone sees the truth. A man comes by who hears the cries of an Argentine child, imprisoned for her parents’ politics, being tortured by her jailers. “It could be my child,” says the man, and he launches a crusade toward justice. Or a man on campus is held down in the shower room and abused with a broom handle by a laughing football team because he is gay until one of you rises up to say, “It could be my brother.” In such moments, the spirit of ethics is no faint abstraction. It is a blindingly clear reality, a demanding plea, a cry you must answer with, at least, your life.

For those who walk it, the road to AIDS grows long. The vigor with which we start our journey withers. We discover fellow travelers whom we love, and then we lose them, losing a part of ourselves as well. My children are too old to forget their final memories of their father, and too young to know how to understand their loss. I, who hugged Brian as he drew his last breath, am really no wiser than they. And so we go down the road together, often laughing, occasionally crying, sometimes very, very quiet.

And then I come here, and see you. Some of you are young enough to have your whole lives before you; others of you, like me, have lived a while. Whatever our age, when morning breaks again, we’ll be called to make decisions, ethical decisions, about how to cash in the energy and time we have been given.

If any are looking for ethical role models who might be worthy of imitation, do not look to me. I was dragged into this crusade kicking and screaming, wanting – desperately – not to play this role. But others came by choice: doctors who gave up practices with high profits to care for patients with low blood counts and no insurance; nurses who set aside stigma to give wasting men not only a vial of medicine but a long hug of courageous affection; lovers and parents, sisters and friends, people who became caregivers when the court of public opinion ruled against any care at all – these are the heroes who should take home awards, and there are plenty of them here, today, in Louisville….

My Voice

For a very long time, I thought I had nothing to say. I was intimidated by people with degrees and high positions, experts. Early in my career, I specialized in being quietly creative as a TV morning show producer, a presidential “advanceman,” and an event planner. The emphasis should be on “quietly.”

By the late 1980s I’d found a way to express myself through art. But my art didn’t make a sound. It wasn’t a voice.

Ultimately, I found my voice in a collaboration. I was able to express my thoughts and feelings, and my collaborator would suggest words that turned my silence into sound. I learned in scores of speeches, keynotes, interviews, and sermons that I did have a voice others could hear.

The power of voice reverberates through everything written by Joy Harjo, the first (and current) Native American US Poet Laureate.  Joy once said she felt a responsibility to represent “all voices, all women, all of my tribe, all people, all earth.” Writing, she said, “frees me to believe in myself, to be able to speak, to have voice, because I have to; it is my survival.”

I’ve wished, lately, that I’d be invited to speak in public more often. I don’t need to be seen or recognized; it isn’t about fame. It’s about using my voice to speak for the voiceless, especially women and those who are powerless and mute. Joy’s reason for speaking out in poetry and song is the same as my reason for taking the podium or the pulpit: “I have to; it is my survival.”

In one of Joy’s anthologies of Native writing she quotes the Apache poet Margo Tamez, now a professor in Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia, who understood what it means to have voice. Read this slowly, out-loud:

I come in many forms

Because of me people think differently

Because of me people pray differently

Because of me people sing differently

Because of me people speak differently

Because of me people plan differently

Because of me people live differently

Voice I am

Sacred voice I am

Sacred voice this I am

I’ve never met Dr. Tamez but I know her voice. I recognize it in my own.

The Greatest Gift

I have some wonderful friends. A few are relatively new but some have been close for decades.

Among my friends are the people who go unnamed but know I am writing of and to them. We’ve been together, you and I, through births and miscarriages, splendid weddings and broken marriages, growing children and dying parents. We’ve wept together in hard times and found ways to support each other. We’ve giggled together at moments of ridiculous joy, even marched together when we believed in the cause.  

Friends like you have become more rare with time. A hundred years ago, most people lived in a single community from early-adulthood to old age. They didn’t change jobs, mates, congregations or neighborhoods. They were near each other physically, making it easier (and sometimes harder) to build intimate, sustained relationships.

Not so now. Although I’ve spent much of my adulthood in-and-out of Florida, since leaving Michigan I’ve spent chunks of time in New York, Maryland, Arizona and (now) California. I changed houses and communities. With time, my interests shifted from one form of art to another, each with its own heroes and practitioners and, thus, each with its own community. Although I never intended it, I moved from one group to another, sometimes losing touch with dear people along the way. My children grew into adults, and my interests grew with them especially when I first held my granddaughter.

I haven’t been as faithful in my friendships as I wish I had. For months and, in some instances, years I’ve owed you a card or letter, a thank-you or I’m-sorry. I wonder why someone has grown silent but I haven’t broken the silence with a call or even an email. I love many of you more than you know, I really do. But I haven’t reached out enough to express that love and I wish I had. 

To the good friends who’ve been in my life through all the ups and downs, know this: You are still very much in my life now. I wonder and worry about how you’re doing in dealing with cancer, in living with dementia, in looking for purpose and meaning beyond your extraordinary careers. Is your family intact? Are your dreams still alive? Have I failed you in any way?

Seeing you now in my mind’s eye I’m grateful for you, My Friend. I would not be who I am were it not for you.

Although I might have doubted the political stance of The Happy Warrior, Hubert H. Humphrey, I’ve never doubted the truth of his reflection when he knew his own life was nearing its end: “The greatest gift of life is friendship,” he said, “and I have received it.”

Me too.